Zapatero demands clarification of how the United States obtained communications from a Plus Ultra shareholder
Counsel said the exchange of information between the United States and Spain raises "reasonable doubts" about respect for procedural guarantees.
Stock image of José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero. Photo: EuropaPress
Former Prime Minister José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero's defense has called for clarification of "how" the US received communications from Ultra's shareholder Rodolfo Reyes Plus, key to the indictment of the former socialist leader at the National High Court.
In a letter, Zapatero's lawyer, Victor Moreno Catena , expresses his "reasonable doubts" about the authenticity of these communications and questions how they have been obtained, dumped, guarded or accessed, as well as how this information has been exchanged between police bodies "without known judicial intervention".
He has therefore asked the investigator of the Plus Ultra case, Judge José Luis Calama , to extend the request for international legal cooperation made this week to the US authorities to allow such communications to be used "as evidence in Spanish criminal proceedings" and not only as a means of investigation at the investigative stage.
The judge, anticipating requests for annulment by thedefence, took this step to ensurethe "validity" of such communications in a possible trial.
Zapatero's defence has put on the table "legitimate doubts and serious difficulties regarding the conditions for the exercise of the right of defence ",whenthe police action that led to the obtaining of communications from the Venezuelan businessman "has hardly been reported".
The US agency Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) sent WhatsApp messages to the Central Economic and Fiscal Crime Unit (UDEF) of the National Police last March, five years afterthat US government agency obtained them in 2021 in an intervention "initially aimed at smuggling."
According to the judge's order, HSI considered that this material could be "relevant" to the Spanish investigation into the Plus Ultra case, but the defence has stressed that it has "no documentation or information on the matter".
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